


Your presence (is haunting me)

by natashawitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Canon Divergent from end Season 12, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Pining, Rare Pairings, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12610880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natashawitch/pseuds/natashawitch
Summary: SPNReverseBigBang PromptSam always thought that no one would ever understand how it felt to be possessed by Gadreel. How he had felt to be precise. Because it wasn’t bad, far from it, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had ever felt so safe and happy as when Gadreel was there with him without even knowing it. He wanted that back. Not being possessed by Gadreel again, no, he figured that Gadreel's presence himself gave him these feelings. So he wanted him, Gadreel, back. Wanted him close. He dreamed of it. Sometimes he could even pretend to still feel him like a ghostly presence around him and that made him feel better. Often Sam questioned just how stupid he was to be in love with an angel long gone… or was he?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sasmtk’s gorgeous art tempted me to tip my toe back into fan fiction. Please check out his work. It is amazing.
> 
> Thanks to Sasmtk for his wonderful art and big thanks to BlackRectangleTattoo, who acted as my beta and without whose help I would have gone with my original and pretty weak version of the ending.
> 
> You may have seen some coincidental similarities to the early episodes of S13 but the bones of my story were written before the premiere aired. 
> 
> The rating is teen and up but only really because the fic contains a few swearwords.
> 
> Usual disclaimer: Supernatural is not mine, I’m just playing in the sandbox. While I am always tremendously flattered to be recc’d anywhere, please do not post my actual stories on any other site (e.g. Goodreads) without my permission
> 
> Hope you all enjoy!

[](https://imgur.com/QscdLlk)

Sasmtk's Inspiring Sam/Gadreel Art

**********************************SPNSPNSPN*********************************

**NOW**

_~ Idaho, Travelling South on I-84, 9 hours out of North Cove, Washington ~_

 

“We never cut a break.” Dean’s hand slams into the Impala wheel with force.

“Shush. He’s sleeping,” Sam cocks his head towards Lucifer’s Nephilim who seems out for the count on the back seat.

“Do Satanic Nephilim need sleep?” Dean grouses with an added huff. 

Sam takes in his brother’s posture, coiled tight, stony faced, hands in a death grip on the wheel. He can see Dean’s emotions like a dam threatening to burst. They’ve lost Mom. They’ve lost Cas. Left bereft again. 

Shifting his body and turning his face to his window, Sam stares out into the pitch blackness of night. They should be inured to losing people. Surely there comes a time when every blow they’ve been dealt builds up to form a callus over their hearts. But Sam isn’t dead inside. He feels. He struggles to deal and move on at times, takes comfort in “We’ve got work to do” and Saving as many People they can manage. He empathizes. He tries to remember their wins. He walks onwards. He tries not to probe too deep anymore. Tries not to pick at the safety pins and duct tape that keep ton loads of crap at bay. But some losses simmer just below the surface. Some blows leave bruises. Mom and Cas hurt bad. Eileen cut deep. Charlie twisted him up inside. Gadreel … 

When he heard that Gadreel had sacrificed himself to get Cas out of Heaven’s jail, it cut Sam up more than he expected. He completely understood Gadreel’s motivations of redemption and the greater good, but he was sorely sorry that it had come to that. Then it all got tossed up and messed into the pain of losing Dean, the search for his brother, the quest to free Dean from demonhood. It was only later, when Sam caught a beat, that he could process that Gadreel was truly gone. That the angel would not make a reappearance in his life. There would be no opportunity to get to know Gadreel, the angel who had been duped by Metatron but had come over to their side in the end. Many times Sam thought of him and how unknowingly being his vessel had been a time of inner peace, as if he was somehow inexplicably protected. 

And not long ago he had felt that protective spirit in a situation where it seemed impossible…

 

**************************************SPNSPNSPN**********************************

**THEN**

_~ Site 94, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado ~_

 

He was talking aloud again, reasoning out loud, needing to hear his own voice, any voice other than a shout of “Chow Time.”

Between his exercises and stretches, he tried to remember the periodic table (badly). He listed the world’s worst serial killers in order. Cain topped the list. 

After a while he began telling stories, personal ones. 

He wasn’t sure what a prolonged stay in solitary would do to his memories. There had been times in the past when his own brain wasn’t very reliable, like when his cage memories tortured him with Lucifer hallucinations. His memory tales were a mixed bag, but it made him feel better to voice out stories of adventures with Sully, winning his soccer trophy, celebrating the end of freshman year in Stanford, even when Dean nearly died after the rawhead hunt.

He was somewhere in a long ramble teasing out how he both loved and hated Ruby when it struck him that someone was listening. He pulled up abruptly.

“Hello?”

“Is there anyone there?” A shiver hit him. Not a ghostly shiver but one of fear. Hallucination-phobia. 

He huffed. Then he poked at it, tried to sense if there really was someone or something. The authorities’ camera had no microphone, as much as he could tell, having investigated first day. A portion of the bland offerings from Chow Time had been daubed and finger painted on the walls. Under his cot an array of sigils and salty lines made do as makeshift warding. Could it be a spell? 

“Cas? Mom?” Sam tried. “Is that you? You guys trying some communication mojo? I don’t know where we are being held, but those presidential agents have got us in a goddamned secret Super Max.”

He hoped Castiel and Mary were trying some hoodoo or Enochian power spell to locate them, but in his gut he knew his sense of a listener wasn’t coming from any spell. 

In an empty dark cell any puzzle could be a lifeline or an obsession, but Sam tried not to probe too deep, not to go down a spiral of intrusive thoughts about someone listening in. 

However later, lying on his cot, hands under his head, eyes open, he very tentatively felt his Listener waiting. 

“Uhem. Hi.” Sam rolled his eyes at himself. “You gotta be mighty bored to listen to my ramblings. Hope you’re not trapped in this hellhole for your afterlife. Don’t think you are though. I think you hear me.”

_Being heard is a blessing._

Sam sat up. Where did that thought come from, and the feeling of patient understanding that came with it? It reminded him … 

Instead of sleep, he found himself telling his Listener about Gadreel, admitting things he never could have said aloud… about betrayal, consent, and confusion of lost time, but also…

“He was good, y’know, ultimately. He made bad choices. Used my hands to kill our friend Kevin and his friend Abner.” Sam punched his flimsy mattress. Kevin still stung bad. “But we’ve all made mistakes ... Big apocalyptic ones. And maybe Dean’d chew me out for being an overly big, too forgiving chump, but … I never felt …”

Sam paused. Was he an idiot to speak these things? To admit them aloud, if only to himself? Or even more of a numbskull to say them to an unidentified listening entity? But what if? What if somehow the one listening was…?

“I felt safe. Ironically I was filled with life as I recovered from the trials. Dean’d ask me if I was sick, and sometimes I felt drained… I guess my passenger’s battery was running low, huh? … But get this, mostly I was good, real damn good. And that was Gadreel’s doing. Hell yes, he did wrong,” Sam’s voice rose as if he had an unseen debate opponent, “and he made some douzy errors in judgement. He inspired fear, killed Kevin, sided with Metatron, and a long time ago he said yes to Lucifer… but in the end he had came good. And y’know what his reward for that was? Obliteration.”

He scrubbed at his eyes, surprised to find dampness there. Injustice always wounded Sam deep. Fighting injustice and unfairness motivated him, be it a victim’s odds against a monster or school bully. It was part of what drove him to hunt, what had made a career in law so attractive when he was a naïve teen.

It hurt to think of Gadreel dying alone, believing he was irredeemable. Because Sam had experienced those feelings. Sam had made mistakes … demon blood, Ruby … what he did to free Dean from the Mark of Cain. But they had all made their own bad judgements. Dean had rashly taken the Mark, Cas opened purgatory … 

“We’ve lost too many. Good people. People we’ve loved.”

Sam gulped.

“If he’d have come home. If he’d made it back to the bunker. I’d have forgiven him there and then. I’d have … I’d have done my damnedest to heal Gadreel. Not in some kind of tit for tat payment for taking away my trial damage, but because … I can’t explain it. Being the only consciousness in my own body was a relief. I had control again and that’s paramount to me. I’ve been messed about too much in my life. But it was different than when I got my soul back and Cas took my Hell-madness. There was an inexplicable loss mixed in with all the chaos of that time. I’d lost something. Someone who I didn’t even know I wanted in my life.”

His voice was hoarse. Time to try to sleep on the most uncomfortable cot in history.

Sam didn’t deal in flights of fancy or what ifs … yet sometimes late at night when the bunker was quiet, or in the stillness of early morning before his run, he wondered, thought of Gadreel, missed his presence. Here in solitary it was amplified. He decided he didn’t truly care if his brain was supplying an imaginary link to his lost angel. 

If a tenuous chance that he had a Listener, and that it was Gadreel, gave balm to his situation, Sam decided he would shameless take it.

Curling onto his right side, like a little spoon, the lone hunter permitted a simple fantasy of warm protective arms holding him and angelic strength at his back.

Gadreel’s essence re-created, Sam slept.

**…**

A bitter wind whistled, whipping against Sam’s clothing. Gone was his filthy prison garb. He looked down at his butter soft old denims, well-worn boots, and red plaid shirt, but something looked off about them as if they were strangely insubstantial. The light was wrong. Lifting his head and flicking his hair out of his eyes, Sam squinted at a searing bright violet, purple and red hued sky. Over his brows he made a sun visor out of his hand, but he couldn’t find a sun in the unnerving sky. It was consistently overly bright in every direction. His eyes burned forcing him to look down at a landscape descending gradually from his slightly elevated position. 

Salt flats as far as the eye could see. At least Sam presumed it was a salt desert, he wasn’t volunteering to taste the crystal white grains beneath his feet. Gleaming whiteness gave way to a spectacular pink lake which stretched on and on and on … In the far distance there was a mirage of silver spires and towers, which if real would have been miles high reaching for the unreal canopy. 

Logically working out that he was dreaming and that his brain was supplying wide open desolation in fascinating color to compensate for his suffocating confinement, he startled when he noticed a crouching figure dressed in black at the lakeshore.

“Hey there? Hey?” Sam called but the sharp wind tore his words away. He shrugged and decided to go with his dreamscape’s flow. “Guess I’m trekking to a strawberry pop rocks lake.”

His boots slid and sunk like walking on bone dry sand dunes. Progress was slow, but the wind died as he closed the distance. He began to hear snap and crackle from a mini campfire just as he spied a flicker of low green flames sheltered by the dude’s body.

Getting much closer, surely enough to have a reasonable discussion at volume, Sam tried again. “Hello! Hey, Man, you know where we are?”

It wasn’t until Sam was almost at touching distance that the figure unwound itself slowly, stretching tall with bones cracking to match his popping campfire. He turned round, and Sam was face to face with Gadreel.

A slight smile graced Sam’s face as he considered how he had fallen asleep remembering the angel, and now this increasingly pleasant dream had conjured the solace that his soul needed.

“Sam, you are here.” Gadreel intoned with wonder, taking a half-step closer, then pausing as if unsure of his welcome or if Sam was real.

“I am,” Sam chuckled, glancing round again at their chromatic surroundings.

“But how did you get here?”

Sam thought the question odd. He pointed at the elevated area behind him, “I walked.”

“Did you come for me?” Gadreel tilted his head.

“Wish I had.” Sam confessed, “But I’m as surprised as you.”

A brief silence fell as they contemplated each other. Gadreel looked the same. Same erect carriage, same symmetry to his face, except maybe his deep green eyes looked less tormented, as if he had gained an inner peace. 

“It’s good to see you, Man.” Sam grinned, leaning forward for a back clapping hug.

“I never thought I would see you again.” Gadreel spoke over Sam’s shoulder as their hug became a long embrace, both holding each other tight, neither wanting to let go first.

“Damn, this is what I needed, didn’t even know I needed,” Sam sighed. 

Gadreel felt real, warm and so solid. He didn’t want to let go, ever. Perhaps he was touch starved, but it was more than that. Seeping into Sam’s bones was the supportive healing sensation he associated with his angel. It was a buoying feeling, compassionate but not pitying, safe but not constricting.

Finally they broke apart, Gadreel raised a hand, feather light tracing Sam’s cheekbone with rough finger pads. 

“Where are we?” Sam whispered. Not a soul could overhear them, but he didn’t want to burst the precarious bubble of this reality.

“Here.” Gadreel answered solemnly. He reached out and took Sam’s hand, exerting a gentle squeeze. With a soft smile he added, “Come sit. I watch the ripples.”

Allowing himself to be led a few paces, Sam copied Gadreel to sit with their boots tipping wavelets of pink lake liquid and with arms wrapped around their knees.

“The mirage looks more solid from here.” Sam remarked on the angel-blade-silver spires on the horizon.

“What mirage?” His angelic companion’s brow furled briefly before meeting his eyes. “Sam, I would like to say. I have many regrets. Many causalities of my actions…”

“Don’t.” Sam halted Gadreel’s confession. “Can we not do this? I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago. We’ve all made mistakes, catastrophic apocalyptic mistakes. And if I hung on to ‘em all I’d sink like a freaking stone. Can’t live like that. You came good, Gadreel, and that counts for a lot. Y’hear me?”

“I hear you.” The angel sighed deeply. “Thank you, Sam. You are a good man. You have a formidable and beautiful soul.” 

Sam’s jaw dropped. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called beautiful before.”

“But you are.” Gadreel insisted. He reached to squeeze Sam’s knee. “Do not forget it. No matter what occurs in your life, remember that.”

“You sure I’m not all messed up, stained, hell shredded, demon blood tainted?” 

“Why do you disbelieve me?”

“I dunno,” Sam’s heart ached. He looked down at the blindingly white shoreline. “I guess I’m not worth such devotion.”

“But you are,” Gadreel’s hand turned Sam’s jaw towards him. He leaned in, breath ghosting across Sam’s parted lips. “I am overjoyed that you came to me.”

“I found you.” Heartfelt words escaped Sam’s lips without brain filter and he leaned into the kiss.

A sweet slow pressure, no hurry, exploring and finding what they liked.

A supportive arm bracing Sam’s back.

Sam’s fingers finding purchase in the other’s jacket.

Heat raced in Sam’s veins, extending their long caress, wanting more. 

He could get lost in this reprieve from reality, this fantasy of being held and loved, and this place where it was safe to stir long dormant emotions …

When finally they broke apart, Gadreel’s complexion was flushed and his lips bee stung. Sam figured he also looked as passionately wrecked.

“I wish I could stay.” Sam said wistfully under skies that had darkened to deep eggplant purple.

“As so I.” Gadreel agreed. 

“I don’t wanna wake up alone.” Sam shuffled closer. He relaxed, inclined his head to the slope of his angel’s shoulder and closed his eyes.

 

**….**

 

Many interminable days later, another being did appear in Sam’s cell offering the ultimate Hail Mary play.

His food tray taken away, hours stretched out long and bleak. 

Sam was murmuring to his Listener.

“I don’t know how you survived eternity in your prison, what strength you must’ve had to persist and maintain your innocence. How did you still possess such kindness and decency to answer Dean’s prayer to heal me after millennia locked away? ... I don’t think I’ll ever eat a bologna sandwich again,” Sam added a bitter laugh for Gadreel’s ears, “not that I can stomach the ones they call chow.”

“And who are you talking to, Sam Winchester?” Billie the reaper, interrupted. “Gotta imaginary friend? One who doesn’t care about the reek in here?”

She smirked at him, all full of self-confidence and smugness, wrinkling her nose for her accusation of body odor and crossing her arms over her leather jacket. 

Any joy at finally seeing another being sank away.

“You’ve been eavesdropping on us.” Sam pointed an accusing finger at the reaper. “Listening in on us.”

“Have not.” Billie leaned back casually, her voice smooth with truth, “Came to your brother’s call of desperation.”

Sam blinked. He’d thought for an instant that he’d found the source of his feeling of being heard. He gave a puff of relief that the supercilious reaper hadn’t been the source of his little comfort.

Billie continued, oblivious or unconcerned by Sam’s cogitations. “He’s not doing too good, y’know. Not coping as well as you are.”

When she was gone and his bloodied hand was still smarting, Sam ruefully, not believing his own words, spoke into the stale prison air.

“Angels gotta go somewhere, don’t they? I mean, Chuck brought Cas back from somewhere. None of us been to The Empty.”

He paced his well-worn tread, door to wall. In the dire promise of their blood pact was the tiniest glimmer of something resembling hope.

“Maybe you’re there, Gadreel.” He whispered. “Maybe being there is better than this crap hole. Maybe I won’t be alone there. Maybe I’ll find you. Make it my mission to find you, if the Empty is the boneyard for angels. No coming back for me, or Dean. But Billie will pick me, I’ll make sure of it.”

 

**********************************SPNSPNSPN********************************


	2. Now

*********************************SPNSPNSPN*************************************

 

**NOW**

_~ Men of Letters Bunker, Outside Lebanon, Kansas ~_

 

“I feel him there,” The devil’s son had said, minutes earlier. “Both of them. Older shards of grace and a newer angelic resonance.”

He’s alone. Dean’s gone for breakfast burritos and Jack’s taking a late morning shower. Leaning against his bedroom door, Sam curls the fingers of his right hand and lifts them to his breastbone. Precise and careful his knuckles press against his sternum exactly where Jack had laid his hand earlier.

At the tail end of an all-night research binge, Sam had found a possible lead in one of the bunker’s tomes. He asked Jack to check for any trace of Lucifer left in him, so they can use it as a sort of tether, or computer ping, for the nephelim to rediscover which multi-dimensional reality contains Mom. Jack reached out, his eyes taking a yellow hue and his body resonating with that speck of grace still present. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Sam wanted to shy away from knowing he maintained any connection to Lucifer but then Jack had dropped the bombshell ... A _‘newer angelic resonance’_ … 

He had been dreaming of Gadreel since the Super Max cell. Often those dreams took place under violet skies. In the morning Sam would wake, refreshed, whole and with a fading sensation of being held in someone’s arms. 

He hasn’t said a word to anyone about his nightly sojourns. Maybe if Cas was still with them he might have confided eventually in his friend, but Cas is gone and it is only a few hours until the time the book recommends as best to make their attempt.

Pulling himself together and straightening his spine, Sam heads to the library to do some double checking and calculations. 

Soon it’s almost time; true midday on the first day of the new moon. Not central daylight time, but the actual planetary hour based on their latitude and longitude. It’s now or wait another lunar cycle.

Dean balls up the last scattered breakfast burrito wrappers and rolls his eyes for the umpteenth time. It’s getting wearying watching him do that. 

“I dunno, Sam. Don’t think some dusty Men of Letters spell’s gonna work here. We’re talking inter-freaking-dimensional shit.”

“It’s not a spell per se.” Sam replies with endless patience.

“Per se? Oh-la-la.” Dean mocks.

Sam sighs, tempted to roll his own eyes for divine witness to having to deal with an alternatively pessimistically angry and infantile brother. 

“It’s a sort of Soul Magic. Souped up psychometry. Instead of finding who or what you’ve lost using an object they held or cherished, you use a soul they touched.”

Dean looks less pleased. “So ‘cause Luci wore you to the prom ...”

“Yes, Dean.” Sam can hear all the bitterness and worry hidden by Dean’s overtly flippant words and tries to soothe him. “It’ll be ok. My soul, as his vessel … “

“That’s just it, Man, your part in all of this. Don’t you got to _want_ to reach the spell’s target? _Want_ to reach … “

“Listen,” Sam interrupts. “It’s not perfect. I’m gonna concentrate on Mom being there, use wanting her back. And hope that’s enough to, I dunno, activate the grace. Then with Jack’s whatever… Celestial DNA? Inherited powers? Put the two together and I believe he can use the technique to reach where Mom is. And if he doesn’t at least we’ve tried, huh?”

“OK. OK. But I’m not fetching and carrying Tylenol and soup to y’both, if all you get is a world of migraines.”

“Duly noted.” Sam attempts to hide his victor’s smile. He hollers towards the kitchen, “Jack, we’re on.”

The nephelim slouches into the library like the teenager he resembles. It can be difficult to remember he is only a few weeks old, yet filled with ancient power. Sam takes a breath, preparing for the coming trial.

“We doing this or having an awkward gazing party?” Dean snaps looking from one to the other.

“’Kay.” Jack replies pulling a chair sideways so the book is at his elbow.

Sam pulls the next one, facing him, his knees almost touching the top of Jack’s knees.

“It says this will be painful.” Jack comments, leaning forward so his fingers touch Sam’s chest.

“Like you care.” Dean grumbles as he begins the impotent pacing of an observer.

Jack ignores the barb, closing his eyes before reciting the words to activate the magic. Once these are said it depends on both Jack being able direct his powers to follow the path revealed by the spell and Sam’s connection to his remnant of Lucifer’s grace.

“IOLCI OLLOG OL GAH.”

_Bring me to its angel._

Sam shivers at the sound of Lucifer’s child intoning Enochian.

Then Jack latches on to the grace. 

Sam feels it like a key being turned inside him, and he inhales pouring all his energy into wanting Mary back, wanting that feeling of home, craving a warm supportive hug, knowing he is wanted and loved.

“ZAMRAN OLLOG GAH HOMIL OALI LADNAH. ZAMRAN OLLOG DARSAR OIAD OI. ZAMRAM! ZAMRAN! ZAMRAN!”

_Show me its true place now. Show me where he is. Show! Show! Show!_

Sam’s memory doesn’t differentiate the pain of having his soul ripped from his body from the cruel torment he suffered in The Cage. He can’t recall the blinding agony of having Death reinsert his soul because he blacked out. When he offered to let Cas use his soul to pull Dean from a World War Two submarine, the intense agony blends with the horror of finding out it was Lucifer in Cas’s body. This now though … is Hell revisited … it is unbearable, excruciating, feeling like his brain will burst and heart will stop stone dead if Jack doesn’t remove his touch instantly … all that keeps him from breaking away, chair tumbling backwards, is some blind yearning for a beloved lost…

“Almost.” Jack crows.

Dean yelps.

Sam’s eyes fly open, meeting Jack’s yellow glowing pupils.

The Nephilim is vibrating with effort, quaking as the power flows through him, or maybe from him.

Sam feels a wrench, worse than using pliers to dig out a deep burrowed bullet.

There is flash, as if some idiot let off a flare in their library. The resounding thunder shakes everything, decorating the table with flecks of shattered stained glass from their art deco lamps.

“What the fricking Hell?” Dean gasps. 

There is somebody else in the library … with back turned, right next to their seats.

Sam looks up.

He can’t believe it.

This is not what was meant to happen. A flutter of anxiety for Mary is drowned by sheer awe.

“What the Hell, Sam?” Dean shouts, “He’s not Lucifer! Wait, were we magicing Lucifer’s ass here?

“No, this was not meant to happen. Why didn’t it work?” Jack sounds confused. “It felt like it was working. I don’t understand.”

“Y’don’t say.” Dean is equally nonplussed with a side of disbelief. “Y’fucked it up. Sammy?”

But Sam is holding his breath. All the blood in his body is rushing through his ears and his heart doesn’t know whether to pound faster or stop in shock. All Sam can manage to do is stare in wonder as Gadreel turns round, smile lighting him up, hand extended.

Sam double blinks before being pulled from his seat by a firm solid welcome grip, and they are racing into each other’s embrace, not caring who sees, what questions they may have, or what the future might hold.

“Felt like I was being torn apart, atom by atom,” Sam mutters into the angel’s neck, “but boy was it worth it. You’re alive.”

“I am. But is this real? Are you real, Sam?” Gadreel is almost breathless as he asks.

“I am real. This is real. You’re here with me.” As he confirms it, Sam can hardly believe his own words.

“You,” Gadreel’s hand carefully cradles Sam’s head, “brought me to you.”

“Guess I did.” Sam chuckles. “Musta really wanted you with me.”

“Thank you. You astound me, my Sam.” 

Sam breaks apart, lovingly punches Gadreel’s bicep, and swings round to face their stunned audience. But Gadreel doesn’t consider their hug finished. He wraps his arms around Sam’s waist from behind. His body warmth envelopes Sam’s back and it is more appreciated than the hunter could have imagined. The luxury of being able to lean into his embrace is incredible.

“Jack,” Sam announces with a deep happiness, “This is Gadreel. You brought him home.”

“Home? Huh?” Dean squints before taking in the joy his little brother is radiating and the cherished way the angel has his back. “Sure kept that quiet, Jerk. Guess this place has room for one more.”

Confirmation that Dean also has his back in all things makes Sam brave enough to crane his neck and take a brief yet astonishingly wanted kiss from his angel’s lips.

“Home.” Gadreel declares.

“Damnright.” Sam grins before ignoring a chorus of TMI to deepen their first passionate extended caress of many to come. 

He hears Dean loudly suggest, “Hey, Jack, how about I introduce you to the vintage automobiles in the bunker garage?”

“But I’ve been in the garage…” Jack protests. As Sam breaks from the kiss he can see a grinning Dean dragging a bewildered Jack out of the library.

“We got some alone time.” Sam smiles.

“A private moment. I wonder if you would care to sit.” Gadreel is unfailingly polite as ever.

Sam chuffs a laugh. “It’s really you.”

They take the two leather armchairs, sidling the heavy chairs close enough to intertwine fingers and knock knees.

“I cannot fathom the power required to pull me from that place, remake a stable version of my vessel, and to bring me here to you.” 

“Jack’s a Nephilim. Lucifer’s kid.” Sam blurts to the truth in one Band-Aid ripping moment.

Gadreel flinches but recovers quickly. “The son shall not bear punishment for the iniquities of the father. Enough of Lucifer’s sins have been visited on others.”

Sam believes him, knowing the eternity of torture the other suffered as a consequence of Lucifer’s doing, but he needs to double check one thing. “You’re not all gung-ho because he is an abomination?” 

“A Nephilim? Not at all, Sam. I remember when the very first Nephilim came into being, a creature created from love between a Grigori angel and a human woman. Who am I to condemn an innocent?”

“My hope’s that being here, learning what’s out there, seeing the way things are, will give him a steer towards choosing the right path.”

Gadreel nods, “You have my fulsome support.”

“Thanks.” Sam grins. A worrying thought occurs to him. “And what about you? Do you have somewhere to be? What do you wanna do now you’re back?”

“I would hope that I could stay, with you, if you wish.”

It’s the answer Sam wanted. “I do wish. I mean I’d like that. As Dean said, we got plenty of room.”

Gadreel’s lips quirk. He tightens his hold on Sam’s hand. “Do you still have the same room?”

Sam nods. “Uh-huh. You wanna room-share?”

“It would be my sincere pleasure.” 

“Mine too.” Sam beams and doesn’t care if he sounds a little corny. “How’s about we check that out now… Your pleasure… My room?”

Sam doesn’t recall racing down the bunker corridor in record time, save for the thrill of the risk that Dean or Jack would spot them. Gadreel slams Door 21 shut with such force that Sam figures his brother has been alerted to their intentions.

Yet once they have the privacy of Sam’s room, they take things slow and tender. They caress with the angel’s back pressed against the door. Sam kisses Gadreel’s collarbones as they perch on the edge of the bed and has the same attention given to his hipbones once they make it fully onto the bed. Exploring each other, finding each other in this way, brings new levels of pleasure, moments of bliss, and a deeper connection that deserves to be cherished and treasured.

Wrapped in the harbor of Gadreel’s arms, sated, whole, content, Sam knows this crazy day has turned out to have the very best outcome, one he could never have dreamed of. He also knows that whatever challenges and trials are to come, finding Mary, guiding Jack, facing Lucifer again, he’ll have Gadreel in his corner. His angel regained, constant, serene and strong, by his side and at his back no matter Winchester Luck might throw their way.

He turns over, onto his side, so he can see his partner, steal a kiss, touch the line of his jaw, and simply be there in that moment, reunited.

*********************************SPNSPNSPN*****************************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Don't forget to send Sasmtk some love too, at http://archiveofourown.org/works/12676410


End file.
